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Amanda V Shane's avatar

I remember the days of used bookstore shopping where I would pick books by the spine. Lol. I’m not kidding. 😅 If the title intrigued me, I would buy it, read it, and if I hated it, I had an “Oh well, better luck next time” attitude about it. I do read reviews, but usually after I’ve read the book for the reasons you talked about.

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Karen R's avatar

A good quarter of the books I buy these days are pre-orders and there are no reviews, which saves me the trouble of angsting over them. :) But when I *do* read reviews, I'm mostly looking for consistency. If all the 1 star reviews say "Oh god the typos why why" I take that into account, but if they're all over the map with what the reviewers didn't like, I assume it's just a matter of taste. Plus almost all books these days let you read an excerpt, and between that and the blurbs, I can usually tell if I'm going to like it. And if I don't, well, life is pain. There will always be another book to try later.

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